Drone Surveillance Just Got Scary Awesome

Do you ever feel like someone is watching you? A shadow over your shoulder, the sound of a footstep that's not yours, a camera craning down from the corner of a building, silhouettes smoking cigarettes down an alleyway--these are the things you should be least worried about because, you see, the future is growing more dystopian by the minute. Spies come from the skies and the insides of wires. And their tools are getting scary sophisticated.

Drones are obviously central to the latest wave of surveillance technology. You've probably heard all about the recent rash of unmanned aerial vehicles shooting missiles at unsuspecting farmers, some of whom are terrorists, in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. More recently, Motherboard's own Brian Anderson told us all about the emerging commercial drone industry and the unsettling reality that these robotic snoopers could be coming to a sky near you. They've proven to be great for peeking behind the walls of Hollywood compounds and catching a bird's eye view of protests. But these unsuspecting targets can always run inside or, if they're feeling violent, just shoot the damn things down.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) took it to a new level this week, though, with the introduction of "the most advanced surveillance system in the sky." Codenamed ARGUS—Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System—the new camera system comes equipped with 1.8 gigapixels worth of sensors. It's made up of an array of 368 sensors not unlike the one in your smartphone, each capable of 5-megapixel resolution. (Adding them all up gives us that 1.8 gigapixel number.) It doesn't miss a thing either since it's capable of streaming a million terabytes, or 5,000 hours, of HD video every day.